Braves are stuck with B.J. Upton

Bill Shanks

06/15/2014

What can the Braves do with B.J. Upton? Unfortunately, not much.

For a team with a winning record, the Atlanta Braves are certainly difficult to watch sometimes. They are up one week and then down the next. They'll make you think they could actually win a World Series against one team and then play the next three games like they may not finish above .500.

And there is one player that seems to be the symbol of the team's inconsistency. He's frustrating beyond belief, to the point that you may not even want to watch him when he comes to the plate.

Now that Dan Uggla is thankfully out of the way, Upton is the player that will make you scream while watching the Braves. He's been a failure in his one-plus season in Atlanta, and you can make a case that he is the worst free agent signing in franchise history.

Somehow, someway Upton has forgotten how to hit. Not that he was Ted Williams with Tampa Bay, but he did hit .255 with the Rays in eight seasons. With the Braves, Upton has hit only .192 since he joined the team last year. He hit an embarrassing .184 last season and has managed only a .206 average so far this year.

How can someone lose 63 points off a career batting average? Well, we have seen this before, haven't we? Uggla hit .263 in his five years with the Marlins, but in his four-plus seasons with Atlanta he's hit only .210. The fact that he can't even hit over .200 anymore has him languishing on the bench with a year and a half left to go on his expensive contract.

The Braves wish they were so lucky with Upton, who has three and a half years left on his expensive deal. So how much do you make a year? Well, Upton makes $83,024.69 a game. That's per game – not per week or per month, but per game. He makes a lot of money to be horrible. Let's not break that down into how much it is per inning. It might make us sick.

Oh, and Uggla? He makes $80,246.91 per game. Let's hope he can pay his mortgage and that his cable bill is never late.

Upton's offense is bad enough, but recently his defense has been horrible. Friday night he dropped a ball he tried to make a basket catch on in center field. Earlier last week, Upton lollygagged on getting to a ball in short center to the point that even the television announcers called him out.

A few weeks ago we saw Upton make a huge defensive mistake in the 8th inning of a game in Boston. It led to a loss. We thought he was this great defensive player, and instead he's as ordinary as a player can get.

The logic for general manager Frank Wren for signing Upton was not wrong. Upton was a 28-year-old athletic player that had success in his first big league stop. He had hit .300 one year. He had hit 28 home runs one year. He had stolen 30 or more bases in five straight seasons.

But no one could have predicted this. That's no defense for Wren, who gave a lot of money to a player that had been inconsistent throughout his career. It would be one thing if Upton could simply be labeled as disappointing, but so far he's been an utter disaster.

And unfortunately, the Braves are struck with him. Upton has over $53 million left on the contract. No team is going to take a chance on him, just like no one has wanted Uggla so far. All the Braves can do is hope that somehow, someway Upton will get on track. But at some point Upton has to give us some hint that's even possible. More dropped balls in center and more pathetic swings at the plate will simply regularly remind us how the Braves made a huge mistake bringing him to Atlanta.

Listen to "The Bill Shanks Show" from 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WPLA Fox Sports 1670 AM in Macon and online at http://www.foxsports1670.com/. Follow Bill at twitter.com/BillShanks and e-mail him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.